John Cow dot Com » wordpress plugins

All New CommentMILK Plugin!

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:55:41 +0000

>> Click Here to Download Comment Milk <<

Installation Instructions

Step 1: Download plugin and extract “CommentMilk” folder.

Step 2: Upload Folder and all the contents to “wp-content/plugins”

Step 3: Log into your blogs admin panel and navigate to “plugins” and activate the plugin “CommentMilk”

Step 4: Navigate to “Settings” –> “CommentMilk”

Congratulations, you have successfully installed CommentMILK!

Use Instructions

Example Image 1: General Settings

A) Latest CommentMilk News: This is a direct feed from JohnCow and will keep you updated on the latest updates to CommentMILK

B) Making CommentMILK Default: You can set it so that CommentMilk is active on all your blogs posts. It is recommended that you set this to “Yes” and then set your default campaign settings how you want them.

C) Current Running Campaigns: Each campaign that you create wil be accesed here. Click the “edit” ink to modify the campaign settings and “delete” to remove the campaign. You can not delete the default campaign.

D) Campaign Name: When creating a new campaign, you wil want to enter the name of the campaign here.

Example Image 2: General Settings Continued

A) Nofollow: You can select whether or not to allow the comment links to be “nofollow” or not.

B) Text to Display in Comment: The default text is…

[Name]s latest.. [link]

…This will then display the commentor’s name and then a link to the latest RSS feed link. The plugin automatically goes to the link entered by the commentor and looks for an RSS feed in the source code. It does this by looking for…

link rel=”alternative” type=”application/rss+xml”

…in the source code on the URL given.

C) Enter Keyword Phrase: By select “Yes” here, you will allow the people who comment on your blog, to check a box and then enter the keyword phrase they want to use to link to the URL they entered. This will then overwrite the auto linking to your site RSS feed and will instead just enter the hyperlinked Keyword Phrase under the comment.

D) Keyword Phrase Text: This is the instruction text that will be displayed if you select “Yes” to the “Enter Keyword Phrase” feature. For example, in the post you are reading, I have entered the text for the comments on this page as…

“Enter Keyword Phrase to Hyperlink to Above Entered URI”

E) Ignore this… it is getting removed

F) CSS Styling: You can decide how the text in the comments will appear. An example might be to enter…

border:1px dashed grey; display:block; padding:4px;

… this would but a grey box around the link under the comment to help it stand out and reward your commentors more.

G) Open in New Window: This will automatically add…

target=”_blank”

…to the links in the comments, so when clicked on you will not lose the reader, instead the link will open in a new window.

Example Image 3: Contest Settings

This area is what you would fill out if you are holding a contest.

A) Subscribe Option: If you want the criteria of “subscribe to newsletter” to be part of the contest, then select “Yes”

B) Subscribe Points: Enter the amount of points they will be rewarded for being subscribed to your blog. I usually enter “1″

C) Subscribe Text: This is the text that will be displayed if you select “Yes” for the subscribe option.

D) Comment Points: If you want to reward 1 point for the person commenting, you can select “Yes”

IMPORTANT –> E) Post ID: This is where you enter the numerical value of the post ID if you only want this campaign to be for a specific post. More then likely a contest will only be applicable to a specific post and so enter the post ID # here. You can find that by saving the post as a draft and then looking at the post=# in the URL of the browser.

Example Image 4: Contest Settings Continued

A) Extra Form Field: CommentMILK allows you to enter up to five extra criteria to include and the form filed is where the title of the critieria will go. So for example, if you contest requires a bog post about the contest, then you could enter “Blog Post URL” here and they would need to enter the URL of the blog post that talks about your contest.

B) Textbox or Checkbox: Depending on the criteria, you can have the option so that the commentor needs to enter info (such as a URL) or you can have a checkbox. The chechbox would be used to acknowledge something. This is to allow for more flexibility on the blog owners part with setting up the criteria.

C) Point Value: This is where you select the amount of points received for completing a task

Example Image 5: General Settings Continued

A) Reward Your Top Commentor: You can now add to any post or page a simple little code that will allwo you to display the top commentors on your blog. An example is…

…this will display the top 5 commentors for the past 30 days. I am using this at the bottom of this post for you to see a live example.

B) Get Paid for Using CommentMILK: Not only can you get all the benefits of this free plugin but if you are a johncow affiliate, you can enter your ID here. If someone clicks the banner under the comments, your link will be tagged with yoru affilaite link and if they visit johncow and sign up to our list, then they will be yours. Then if they upsell to TrafficKahuna or the all new SyndicateKahunaPRO then you get the lifetime commission. It is better then just linking to us, isnt it?

C) Add New: Click the Add New if you are creating a new custom campaign.

D) Update Options: Click “Update Options” if you are only making changes and are not creating a new campaign.

[commentmilk num=5 days=30]

OK, so what are your thoughts about this plugin and what features would you love to see added?

New Look at John Cow dot Com and the Reasons for It

Jason Katzenback — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:00:49 +0000

If you are a regular visitor to the JohnCow homestead, you will have noticed that we have done a little rennovating around here and we are very happy with it so far. We still have a few minor things we want to do but for the most part we are VERY HAPPY!

So Why the Redesign?

The previous JohnCow template was fantastic. The colors, images and everything was very nice looking and it was a great template, the problem however was with the templates functionality.

1. Above the Fold: When designing or selecting a template, one of the first things you want to ensure is that your main action needs to be above the fold. What this means is if you want subscribers or buyers you want the offer to be immediately viewable as soon as they land of your blog.

The previous template had a huge header graphic and as a result there was a lot of wasted real estate that did nothing but look nice. With the new template we now have our highest priority offer (opt in) in the header area, making it immediately viewable and have shrank the hieght of the header so it allowed for other action items below to move up higher.

2. Move non action items to the footer: The old template had a cool looking footer but it did not allow for much information to be added. This in turn caused us to have to jam everything into the sidebar of the template and caused some distraction from people seeing the items we wanted them to take action on.

With the new template we now have much more room to be able to ensure we have everything available on the page but it is not jammed into the side bar and distracting the reader from what we feel is first priority.

3. Internal Functionality: The internal structure of the template was also a huge improvement for us. Most templates have the same basc structure and as a result if you are trying to update the template, you need to try and find where that code is in the main templates and if you are not savvy at php and html, it can be a bit of a challenge.

With our new design it takes full advantage of WordPress’s powerful widget technology and all the main areas that are most likely to see changes now use widgets.

There are also more php pages within the template, for example the top navigation on the page is a template page all to itself. This allows for much more control when updating and editing the templates.

Whats Left to Update?: There are only a few small changes left to do and this has to do with creating custom template pages for thankyou pages (remove action items that will confuse people from thinking they might not have already opted in) and opt-in landing pages (such as the ebook page and soon to be Keyword Corral page) that we want the focus to be on the content and getting people to sign up rather then other banners and links.

So, there you have it… the reasons for the updrade!

I also want to give a HUGE THANKYOU to Hyder over at http://www.weborithm.com/ for doing such a fantastic job on this template. If you are ready to take your blog to the next level and are interested in your own custom template, I 100% recommend you check them out. Draw out what you want and http://www.weborithm.com/ will be able to do it for you.

So, what I want to know is…

[poll id="10"]

Mooonetize and Optimize with WordPress Plugins

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:50:25 +0000

It seems that every time I visit a blog, I see features that I didn’t see on the previous blog. With so many different developers and designers out there, I often wonder what kinds of plugins and which ideas really are best for a website. The list below will summarize a few of my favorite plugins. These are the plugins that help me to optimize, and monetize my blog most efficiently.

Optimizing
- Akismet Spam Blocker: This is an absolute must! Blocking comment SPAM can be a constant challenge without this plugin. All you have to do is get the free API and click “activate”. I think that some people are hesitant or just plain lazy and end up not getting the needed API for this plugin. It’s free, it reduces your workload automatically, and it works!
- All-In-One SEO Pack: This plugin is really a must for any blogger or website developer. “This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for WordPress SEO”. The All-In-One SEO pack helps you to effectivey raise your search engine ranking on a page-by-page level by adding tags, descriptions and titles more efficiently.
- CForms II: Every blog needs a contact page. Although much more than just a contact page form builder,CFormsII is a full-featured, AJAXian plugin that makes it easy for you to create forms and add them to your pages. Including SPAM protection like CAPTCHA imges is a snap. Although the interface may seem a bit complex, this plugin is really the Cadillac of forms for WordPress.
- Google XML Sitemaps: Submitting your sitemap to Google manually can be a time consuming task. Lucky for us, there is this free plugin that does it automatically after every post. Not only does it keep Google abreast of your updates, it also helps to increase your findability on web searches.
- ShareThis: Social Bookmarking is a great way to gain site visitors. Accounting for a large chunk of traffic and exposure, adding links to sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon is now really easy to do and takes just one mouse click.
- Viper’s Video Quicktags: Adding video content to blog posts can be a real pain. You can’t really do it in the visual editor and sometimes the code just doesn’t work properly with WordPress. Viper’s video quicktags helps to ease the process and makes adding video to your posts a snap.
Monetizing
- AdSense Manager: Do you have Google AdSense? Then you know that sometimes adding the code to your site is not as straightforward as you’d like. With this plugin, you can automatically generate AdSense code and position the ads via widgets.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith: I’m not really sure if this belongs in this category or if it belongs in the “optimization” category. FeebBurner FeedSmith helps you to easily make available and visible your FeedBurner feed. The reason I have this here is that I monetize my RSS Feed, so if you don’t have or use FeedBurner to manage your RSS, you really should!
- PayPal Donate: If you want to have an easy way for your readers to send you money, than this is it! Adding a quickly recognizable PayPal button to your posts or pages, this plugin makes it easy for you to receive money through PayPal.
- RSS Footer: Tying in with the above mentioned FeedBurner plugin, RSS footer is the “how” you monetize your RSS feed. Adding affiliate links or paid advertising is a snap and you can be as creative as you want to be in how to monetize the feed.
- Triggit: I’ve been using Triggit now for about a week. It’s so easy to add links to Amazon, Commission Junction, Shopping.com, and others, this plugin makes monetizing your blog really easy.
- WP-Amazon: Amazon.com is one of the world’s biggest online retailers. Now adding contextually relevant links to your posts is a snap!

I hope this list has given you some sense of how easy it is to manage your blog. The links above are free plugins that help me to optimize and monetize my blog, and I hope you find them useful. What plugins would you add to this list and what kind of plugins do you wished existed for WordPress?

Nick is a 20-something full time grad student and full time IT guy. Specializing in Information Architecture, he often dabbles in online projects. His latest project, a blog at http://www.learnhow2earn.com, is a blog that details his online money making experiences. Like what he has to say? Check him out and drop a comment!